2011 British GP review

The Ferrari driver scored his first win of the year after Red Bull made a mistake during Sebastian Vettel’s pit stop.

Vettel had taken the lead from second on the grid at the start. He passed Webber, who started from pole position, as the race began on a partly wet track.

The entire field opted to start the race on intermediates as the track was heavily wet for much of the lap but almost dry around the new pits.

Vettel led Webber, Alonso and Jenson Button, who passed Felipe Massa at the start. But Massa came back at Button on the second lap at Village to claim his place back.

Button then came under attack from his team mate. Lewis Hamilton had picked off Kamui Kobayashi, Nico Rosberg and Pastor Maldonado in quick succession at the start, followed by Paul di Resta.

On lap three he passed Button for fifth and set off in pursuit of Massa. But his chase was delayed when he took to the run-off at Brooklands.

Meanwhile Vettel was making his escape, pulling away from Webber at up to a second per lap.

Schumacher hits Kobayashi

Michael Schumacher had made a great start, picking up four places and challenging Kobayashi for eighth. But when Kobayashi ran wide at Brooklands Schumacher clipped the back of the Sauber, tipping him into a spin, and breaking the front wing on the Mercedes.

Schumacher had to replace the nose and was later summoned for a stop-go penalty – the stewards using them instead of the usual drive-throughs because Silverstone’s new pit lane carries such a small time penalty.

He took the opportunity to switch to soft tyres and his quick sectors times showed the other teams it was the way to go. Button was among the first to make the switch and he was instantly faster, having struggled somewhat on intermediates.

The cars in front followed suit, Hamilton jumping past Massa by pitting before him. The top three kept the same order, Vettel delaying his stop, not needing to take any risk as he’d built up an eight-second lead.

Hamilton versus Alonso

After the pit stops Hamilton was right on Alonso’s tail, the Ferrari driver struggling to get his tyres up to temperature. He dived down the inside at Copse and claimed third place.

But he couldn’t leave the Ferrari behind and just a few laps later, Alonso was close enough to use his DRS. With the wing open on the Wellington straight, he passed Hamilton in a straight line as they headed to the braking zone at Brooklands.

Hamilton pitted at the end of that lap, taking on a fresh set of soft tyres. Alonso was flying, lapping quicker on old tyres than Hamilton did on his first lap on a new set.

This round of pit stops proved decisive, as both Red Bull drivers lost time and came out behind Hamilton, promoting Alonso into the lead.

While Vettel tried for lap after lap to dislodge Hamilton from second, Alonso made good his escape, pulling out a ten-second lead over his pursuers.

Vettel takes back second

Vettel got as close as he could to Hamilton without passing him, almost pushing the McLaren down the straight towards Copse in his efforts to get past.

Eventually he changed tack and made for the pits for a third and final pit stop. This one was executed cleanly, and when Hamilton came in on the next lap Vettel was easily through into second.

McLaren believed they’d seen a opportunity to get Button ahead of Webber, and told him on the radio to pit to overtake the Red Bull. But the message was replayed on the worldwide broadcast and Red Bull lost no time in bringing Webber in. McLaren aborted Button’s pit stop and brought him in on the next lap.

He didn’t get much further than the pits. The mechanic on his front-right wheel failed to attach it properly, and it worked loose as he left. Button pulled over into retirement.

Fourth-placed Webber was now bearing down on Hamilton, who McLaren had urged to save fuel. Red Bull relayed that message to Webber as well, adding: “McLaren could be bluffing to get us to kill the tyres.”

They weren’t. Webber passed Hamilton easily in the DRS zone and the McLaren driver now had Massa’s Ferrari to worry about.

The battle between the two came down to the last lap as Massa tried to take him on the outside at Vale. The pair banged wheels and Hamilton cut back up the inside of the Ferrari at Club, snatching fourth place back as they sprinted for the line.

Red Bull call off the fight

This was exactly the kind of racing Red Bull did not want to see between their two drivers.

Webber had closed on Vettel at over a second per lap after passing Hamilton. With around four laps to go the team ordered him to hold position behind his team mate.

Alonso, meanwhile, had romped off to an emphatic win. Far from catching the Ferrari after getting past Hamilton, Vettel had dropped back, and Alonso crossed the line over 16 seconds clear despite backing off at the end.

Nico Rosberg finished sixth, heading a trio of cars who all made two stops instead of the three preferred by the leaders.

He dropped back at the start but fought back, passing Maldonado and the Sergio Perez, the latter finishing five seconds behind the Mercedes.

Nick Heidfeld rebuffed a challenge from the recovering Schumacher to hold on to eighth place.

The final point went to Jaime Alguersuari, who had followed his team mate past Vitaly Petrov earlier in the race, only for Sebastien Buemi to drop out following contact with Paul di Resta.

Pit problem delays Di Resta

Di Resta had looked a dead cert for points until Force India made a mistake on his pit call, telling him to stay out when he was already in the pit lane. Adrian Sutil ended the race 11th in front of Petrov.

There were no points for either of the Williams drivers, Rubens Barrichello finishing 13th in front of Maldonado.

With neither Lotus finishing, Timo Glock took 16th for Virgin in front of his team mate. The HRTs of Vitantonio Liuzzi and Daniel Ricciardo were the last runners.

I do think that Alonso would have been close to Vettel at the end even without the pitstop, not sure he would have won, and clearly with less of a big lead at least, but he would have been in the fight.

I agree. It got really boring seeing Vettel win nearly every race. Although im not keen on alonso it was good to see someone other than Vettel/RedBull to win..
However i hope to see Button up on the podium again soon!!

Ferrari had updates which they said worked very well, they were quick at Valencia and Canada and apparently they weren’t one of the teams to object to the rules changing back (according to Benson it was Sauber and Williams). Ferrari won because they did the best job this weekend.

Well stefano domenicali basically said they were holding off on signing off on going back to valencia spec. For the sake of good will and the sport they agreed, more or less his words not mine. At the end of the bbc 1 show.

Ferrari were being smart then and not causing any arguments but if the sole reason they could be competitive was because of the rule change I seriously doubt that Ferrari would agree to sign back all for keeping the sake of keeping a bit of peace.

There are 2 effects:
* Mclaren and Red Bull wings cut short by the ridiculous decision of the FIA to change rules mid season
* Ferrari finally to the speed the showed in pre-season testing, probably having found and fixed the discrepancy between windtunnel data and reality

I am absolutely no fan of Alonso (as person, great racer) and also Ferrari and usual dirty politics or Ferrari Internationl Assistence (FIA) but they REALLY deserver this win – pitstop error or not Alonso would have won. No way Vettel could have kept Alonso behind him, lap after lap Alonso was more than a second quicker, particularly the 2nd sector (weird BBC didn’t pick it up) he (and Massa) were often more than a second quicker than the Red Bull and Mclaren drivers

It would be good of Ferrari to agree to reverting back to Valencia ruling as 11 out of 12 teams already agreed including the teams that initially wanted to file protest. The issue is now not the blown diffusors but FIA’s stupid decision to change rules mid season.

Fairly sure Jean Todt specifically made it unanimous instead of 3/4 in favour to allow Ferrari (who most profits from rule change to veto the change back).

It had to be all or nothing to stop protests from a team like hispania williams or sauber who seemed to gain/didn’t have a ebd system at all. In which case we would have had the silverstone mess all over again.

A bit of a shame that even with this great win by Alonso, Vettel actually gains a bigger lead once again (also a bit helped by Horner bothering Webber with annoying talk).

It might have been better if Hamilton could have pushed until the Flag, or indeed Button hadn’t stopped without the wheelnut. DiResta might have been very good in the points if not for his assorted troubles today. Most of it was not his mistake though, so he can take courage from that.
And Perez did the trick of ending up in the solid points again! Also congratulations for Ricciardo for keeping everything together to the flag.

I really enjoyed my racing, and only a few times saw DRS being far to much to be good. Pretty nice TV coverage as well, although they had a hard choise with following WEB/VET and MAS/HAM in the last lap.

Wow! We don’t get a race like that often. Many mistkaes which kept the drivers very close to each other. It seemed the fate did everything to make Alonso and Ferrari win, an historic win as they won their first race here 60 years ago.
Maldonado was disappointing. He fell behind Barrichello who started much further behind the grid than him.
Also di Resta once again hit the driver in front damaging his front wing. He should have taken the measures of the car by now.

Agreed. While the headline some what downplays the dominating win Alonso had (almost 20 second lead which cannot be overlooked), Alonso drove an amazing race and would have won even without the pitstop jazz.

I know Vettel had pit problems but I thought it was a very good win from Alonso. He stayed calm, got his tyres into the zone to repass Hamilton and once he was in the elad he was just pulling out sensational times that I couldn’t dream of matching on F12010 with the aids turned on :P

pfff hamilton made a mega pass on alonso early on, on slicks on the wet track supreme bravery and skill. Like wise when the tables turned alonso was able to make a good move on hamilton neither of them has taken either of them to school.

Last time he tried to pass Hamilton, his nose was about to stab Hamilton’s diffuser. I’ve never seen such closing gap in corners not in straight however he didn’t make it. Once again many people would have doubt about his overtaking skill.

Yet again another collision for Schumacher, although this is the “right” type of collision, one that can happen when you’re racing and not when you’re making silly assumptions about where the other driver is on the track like in Turkey or Valencia.
However, still an error.

But I’ve been positively impressed with his recent pace. He was faster than Nico all the way round today. That edge that Nico has on him is slimmer in QLF, but it seems to be gone completely and turned into a deficit for Nico on Sundays.

Michael was practically a rookie last year, what with new regulations and not driving single seaters competitively in lower formulae. It was completely foreign and naturally all Rookies need a year or so to fully adjust. Now Michael is somewhat “one” with the car it was only a matter of time before he started getting the best of Nico. He is far from his dominant former self but there are glimpses of that race master peeking through occasionally. I just hope Mercedes can give him a race winning car to put him fully in his element.

As for the collision, it’s a tricky one, he simply braked too late which is completely his fault but look how many times Hamilton did the same thing on the run down the Wellington straight, could’ve happened to anyone.

If anyone was at fault it was Massa! Massa made the late breaking move on the outside which was always going to be a gamble, Hamilton was on the inside and Massa cut across him. However I would rather see these sort of moves than watch a procession of cars going around a track. I am glad neither driver got a penalty as this is racing but if one was to get a penalty it would have had to be massa as Hamilton clearly had nowhere to go but in to Massa.

If you are an F1 fan you will understand this however if you have no idea about what you are talking about then I can understand your view.

David A schumacher got a penalty for basicly the same thing. Granted it was more pronounced e.g he came from further back and faster speed. But it was on a very wet track and the first time he used drs, i’d say that was more understandable than a coming together at hairpin speeds and yet he got a penalty. The only reason i could see for the difference of opinion with the stewards is that it was at the end of the race and so neither hamilton or massas race was comprimised but i don’t know if that even matters.

Personaly i think 95% of the penaltys this year have been uncalled for but if they’re given there should at least be consistancy.

I am not deflecting any blame. It was clear that it was massas move and he tried an outbreaking manouver around the outside of a very tight corner. This was always going to be a gamble as to whether hamilton could stop or whether massa would be forced off the track. Don’t get me wrong, I do not blame massa at all and love to see these moves as long as they are not undoubtedly stupid. I agree that Neither driver deserved a penalty. However for anyone to blame Lewis for this particular incident is just plain silly as there was never going to be quite enough room for them both if hamilton could not take an almost impossibly tight line around the corner. Hamilton has stated that he simply could not stop on his cold breaks (remember these breaks need to be at operating temp in order to work properly) and also Massa has stated that he thought that it was a perfectly fine battle.

My point is that it was great to see a good battle to the end but if anyone was to be punished it certainly would not have been Hamilton as he was the one being overtaken, massa would have been the one that would have caused an avoidable incident as he was the one that made the daring move.

For the record I also thought Schumachers penalty was harsh and I honestly can’t stand him…

My views are rarely based on my like for a driver and are mostly based on simple fact or my love of motor racing (Racing being the operative word).

Scumacher did not get a penalty for the same thing. In that incident it was schumacher simply loosing control a little. He was not even trying a move as such. Plus even if he was it would have been him that was making the move while in the hamilton incident it was massa making the move. They were not even slightly the same incidents and I also thought Schumachers penalty was very harsh given the track conditions.

To add to that Hamilton was trying to stop in a very short distance (due to Massa placing his car on the outside of the tight corner) on cold breaks (due to his fuel saving). They both did well not to take each other out of the race completely.

Lol, Riise…how did we go from MS needing only a few races after his return to F1 to be on form (that from Ross Brawn and all MS fans) to MS being practically a rookie last year and therefore like rookies needing a year or so to fully adjust? Are you suggesting his status as 7 time WDC means nothing then?

It is only because of his shabby results in his return ie. his rookie-like driving, that an excuse like ‘he is practically a rookie all over again’ is even being suggested by you. Can you imagine how silly his return would have sounded back when he announced it if the general concensus was that he was practically a rookie again, and therefore starting an F1 career at 40 plus years of age? He would have been lauged out of any thought of coming back.

As no MS fan I can sure be accused of running the guy into the ground for a lot of controversial things in his career. You have done the opposite and are reaching very very far to defend the man.

MS may be finally matching NR but still finds himself being outqualified by him, outpointed by him by 12 now, and without MS’s good starts he’d be nowhere still. The good starts only work if one doesn’t squander them.

Since MS is far from being a rookie, every race proves more and more what advantages it took for him to have in the past such that he was able to compile the numbers he did.

Hey im not a big fan of lewis but ill be the first to tell you he drove a good genuine race today and was rooting for him to get on the podium. Just cause your driver didnt make the cut today dont sit there and undermine what alonso did, he was well on the pace to catch vettel anyway, but the pit stop made it far too easy and gave him a small gap that would ultimately lead to an easier win. Def driver of the day, some agree, others might not..

I would say Lewis was the driver of the day purely as he managed to take so many places in vary difficult conditions and for his amazingly daring and skillful pass on Alonso. However although I can’t stand Alonso I do admit he drove a very good race and fully deserved his win. He is not driver of the day though for me as he was in a car that was clearly within a chance of winning from the start while Lewis was in a car that was 2 seconds off the pace!

You might think my opinion is biased but I have to say that my dislike for Alonso is for him as a person (after hearing first hand accounts from people I know at Ferrari, plus his antics at Maclaren etc). As a racing driver I think he is one of the best out there and admire his skill very much. After all I am an F1 fan so the driving is what I admire most about a driver.

It will be interesting to see if Ferrari are as competitive come next race if the rules are put back to what they were before Valencia. I certainly hope so as I am getting very bored of Red Bulls dominance. Maclaren should certainly see a return to competitiveness again.

He is not driver of the day though for me as he was in a car that was clearly within a chance of winning from the start while Lewis was in a car that was 2 seconds off the pace!

I don’t get it. Based on this logic, Ricciardo is the driver of the day for sure.
Hamilton had a car that was way off the pace, and he finished way off the pace. Alonso had a winning car, and he won. Overall pretty straightforward for them when it comes at achieving their full potential today. It’s not like Lewis outperformed his car today, really.

Of course it still makes sense that he’s your DOTD if you think he raced better in some way that you find more valuable, but it doesn’t make sense to name him like that just because he hadn’t a winning car. He didn’t come even close to win, indeed.

Well he did not come far off if the fuel issue had not arisen. Plus He was nowhere near as far off the pace as the qualifying time suggested he should be. He should have been at least 1min 44 down judging by his qualy times but he was less than 30 secs and that was with him lifting off to save fuel!

Comparing this to riccardo is ridiculous as he finished last! He also finished around the same distance down as was suggested by his qualy times (although that is difficult to judge as he was out in q1)

Heidfeld was the other driver that performed over and above, although he was helped a bit by two drivers ahead retiring and one given a stop go penalty. Still a great drive though.

That’s still nonsense. These direct proportionality you’re making to justify your pick for the DOTD has no room in F1, *particularly* this year where the very pace of the pace-setter (Red Bull) has been massively different from QLF to race day in every single event.

Of course the comparison with Ricciardo is ridicolous, i used it to point out how “Bad car makes for great driver” was a faulty deduction. And this direct proportion you’re making it’s even worse in this aspect because that makes Alguersuari the DOTD by light years in front of anyone using your own bases (of course he did very well but I think not many people would pick him for DOTD).

Also you can’t take the rising of fuel issues for Lewis and suggest that without them He would have not been so off the pace and even actively fighting for the win.
Saving fuel is an integral part of GPs since the ban of refuelling. *Every* driver saves fuel during *every* GP, that’s how engine map are designed. If you take the default engine map (meaning the map that will be used most of the time during the race) and use it throughout the whole race without changing it, you won’t make it to the end of the distance. You’ll run out of fuel.
Any driver encountering fuel issues these days does that simply because earlier in the race they would/could not compromise enough/at all in terms of performance, most of the time because they found themselves constantly battling with different drivers (the same happened to Rosberg in China this year). If Lewis would have follow a more homogeneous fuel strategy he wouldn’t have had the need to back off in the finale stages but also not the edge in performance to fight that hard in the middle of it, and roughly finished the same distance down.

I am not basing my entire decision on proportionality. Hamilton was excellent to watch and made some fantastic passes. The pass on alonso showed particular skill and guts. However you also have to look at what he got out of the car he had and also where he started and finished. That is after all the main point of F1 Racing (ie to get the most out of the car and to finish as high up as possible given your start position). I am not denying that Alonso drove very well and fully deserved his win, however he was helped a great deal by Hamilton (or Vettels inability to overtake, depending on how you look at it) and The RB pit stop issues. But still a great drive. Hamilton had a poor car and finished in 4th having started 10th on the grid. He handled the conditions brilliantly at the start and handled Alonso and Vettel very well while they were behind him.

And Alguersuari also fully deserves praise too and is indeed also in contention of driver of the day but was helped by 3 retirements ahead of him.

I agree with you on the fuel issue to a point as yes it is entirely normal to need to save some fuel at some point, however is seems that Hamilton had even less than he expected to have as normally the fuel saving is not quite so severe. It seemed to catch out the team too as they appeared to be a little puzzled too. So my point is that Hamiltons fuel issue was unexpected rather than something that he should have managed earlier on. Indeed he seemed to back off earlier in the race too which is obviously normal in a race.

However it is obviously difficult to assume he would have finished higher up or not as we will never really know.

Also take into consideration Lewis’s fantastic defensive display against the much faster Vettel. Great race from lewis. Really seems like mclaren sruggle with hot track temperatures and ferrari struggle in cold track temperature. Ferrari also seem to struggle with the harder compound aswell

It was a brilliant race. I didn’t watch qualifying yesterday so I was AMAIZED at that cable camera that showed the whole Brooklands, Luffield and back to the old start/finish straight. It was superb to see the cars taking so many different lines when it was still wet.

The changing conditions worked brilliantly too. Appart from the Red Bull orders, everything was great. The battles between Hamilton, Alonso, Webber, Vettel, Massa… and Rosberg-Perez! Epic!

I watched the full race on the BBC, and boy it makes the whole thing so much more enjoyable than this south american noobs we have here.

3 Argies and a Mexican that uses skype to make comments about the race (mostly about Maldonado and Perez, obviously… and he’s always talking rubbish).

The 3 argies are lame too. But they miss too much of the team talks and make silly mistakes while commentating. Even me, sitting on my sofa, with a cup of coffee on one hand and a cookie on the other, understand so much more about the race than they do.

Meanwhile…..down here at “Conspiracy central” we are wondering whether Mark Webber made a bad start or a million dollar start, of course we don’t believe that “I ignored race orders…..Seb beat me fair and square” routine all he had to say was he put on a race for the fans and still helped his team and team-mate maintain there lead, but I have not seen the interview so all bets are on hold.

Well you can help but wonder. Considering some statements even before the season starts i though Webber accepted his second driver role but considering the fiasco in the last laps, ether he did not or Red Bull was pulling an Oscar production.
There is also the possibility that a certain number 2 just did something on the last laps that he could do earlier too, just to show frustration about his treatment.

Haha, yeah. There are too many people that search for a reason to bash Vettel.

“Vettel celebrates at all when he wins, he says anything at all on the radio, he shows emotion when he wins his first title, but if he didn’t do any of that, he’d be an emotionless robot who I’d still complain about.”

I think you are a bit wide of the mark there. To be honest I am not certain of his overall talent as he certainly does not appear to have the same ability to pass as Hamilton and Alonso, but it is clear that he is incredibly quick when given a clear track in front of him. He is certainly as quick and any driver out there and is a deserving WDC. I did not like his antics last season and I think he was a bit lucky not to crash out more than few times through his own fault, but every WDC needs a bit of luck just like any other sporting champion does so I am not going to hold that against him (Although you could argue that Hamilton had negative luck over his winning season even if he did get lucky in the last race).

I think Vettel sometimes comes across big headed and arrogant but to be honest that may be partly a cultural thing as much as anything and I would rather see him over celebrating the wins than watch a Kimi style emotionless robot on the podium.

My description of vettel’s wins as cheap/hollow in no way proves I ‘dislike him for the sake of it’. I have stated why I dislike it and am I am entitled to my opinion.

Also, I don’t rate racing drivers on how ‘nice’ or ‘funny’ they are. I was a huge fan of Raikkonen for his driving style and also the fact that he never felt the need to court media sycophancy – something which vettel does at any given opportunity.

You are entitled to your opinion, so yes, you are entitled to dislike him. But describing his wins as cheap and hollow without anything to back that up doesn’t exactly make it look like you’re being fair on the guy does it?

None of them?
Fangio? Constantly switching to the team with the best car?
And I’m not saying Fangio’s success was cheap, It was absolutely not. Just saying that you would say practically everything, no matter how ridicolous, to rate Vetter badly.

And not just that, you keep to switch arguments beetween his behaviour, his driving skills, his persona, everything.
Nurburgring 2007 was a reference about how unclassy Alonso’s celebration could get: “infuriating” and “juvenile”.

Good race by Alonso but he was also helped by a very quick car possibly the quickest in race conditions. It was amazing that Hamilton in a much slower car was competing with him till the last pitstops and also passed him at one stage.

BTW what a dismal failiure from the Mclaren team at their home GP. First they messed up Lewis Qualifying, extremely poor pitstop of Button and than short fueling Lewis Hamilton. How can you expect the drivers to challenge for victories and Podiums. Already the car is not the quickest, lost a lot of performance from the rule change and over that team is doing silly mistakes is very unacceptable performance.

Hamilton showed in the first few laps his class and what he could do if he had a competitive car.
It is only Hamilton who dragged that car near the podium despite all the mistakes by his team. If it wasn’t for the rain at the start, Hamilton would have definitly finsihed near P9 P10.

Good battle between Alonso & Hamilton, we some seen some proper racing today.Nice to see Webber racing all by himself.Tough luck for Button.Also grateful to see Hamilton back on track but shame that his tank wasn’t feed well.After the last corner incident with Massa I thought may be he need to go the the panel again but good that he was clean.Not sure about Schumacher,seems like he had no grip going for that corner to pass Kobayashi.It was a eventful race with action up & down the order,poor director didn’t knew which way to point the feed.

i enjoyed the race really as everybody did…but iam sure ferrari are not concentrating on massa..offcourse accepted tat he is a bit slower at times than fernando..but hav to accept ferrari is making massa a joker..using however they need…massa didnt gain any position till now with the strategies the ferrari use..nor the good pit stops..poor guy has to fight himself for those 4th and 5th positions…its really ridiculous